Employee Engagement: Management Snake Oil Won't Help

The keys to motivated workers are resources, clear priorities and feedback. So before worrying about gamification, let's focus on organizational fundamentals.

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The notion of employee engagement is all over the news, as organizations such as Gallup, Dale Carnegie and Badgeville tell us how to herd cats. Yes, keeping employees engaged with their work and one another is a challenge, particularly with knowledge workers, but before we try to fix the problem with gamification and other trendy approaches, we need to get back to some workplace and organizational fundamentals.

What do we mean by engagement? According to Gallup, an engaged employee will "work with passion and feel a profound connection to their company" as well as "drive innovation and move the organization forward." A disengaged employee is "sleepwalking through their workday, putting time -- but not energy or passion -- into their work" while the worst kind "undermine what their engaged coworkers accomplish."
In Badgeville's latest employee-motivation infographic, the gamification/behavior-modification company cites a variety of data and industry sources to document the sorry state of employee engagement:

-- 71% of employees aren't engaged. (Gallup).

-- Only 10% look forward to going to work every day (Maritz Institute).

-- Only 19% are satisfied with their jobs (Manpower).

-- Highly engaged employees are 26% more productive than those who aren't, and their companies earned 13% greater returns over a five-year period (Watson Wyatt WorkUSA).

Not cited by Badgeville, Gallup also notes a significant increase in earnings per share (147%) among the companies in the top decile of engagement. And according to Dale Carnegie's own employee-engagement infographic, 80% of employees who are dissatisfied with their direct supervisor and 70% of employees who lack confidence in senior leadership are also disengaged employees.

More money doesn't make people more engaged.

-- 71% of employees say the most meaningful recognition they've received has no dollar value (Cindy Ventrice, author of the book Make their Day: Employee Recognition That Works).

-- 79% of employees who quit their jobs cite lack of appreciation as the main reason (Society for Human Resource Management).

According to our own InformationWeekIT Salary Survey research, the five job factors that matter most to IT managers have nothing to do with compensation. Those job factors are their opinion and knowledge are valued; they're involved in setting company strategy and determining goals; their job is important to company success; their job is challenging; and they relate to the company culture and values.

Back to those workplace and organizational basics I referred to earlier. To understand what I'm talking about, consider two different archetype IT organizations, one at Abundance Corp. and the other at Overlord Industries.

At Abundance, all IT employees have most of what they need to do their jobs: resources, clear priorities, feedback, mission focus. They're able to plan their work and then work on their plan, adjusting along the way.

At Overlord, IT employees are always under siege. When one thing breaks, they go into firefighting mode, and just as they return to their station, the fire alarm rings again. There are no clear priorities; therefore, everything seems to be a priority … so nothing is a priority.

Overlord doesn't give its IT organization enough people or money in the first place, and because no organization can possibly resource "all priorities," what few resources it has seem like even fewer. Planning is a fantasy. Feedback is a joke, along the lines of: "Can't you just juggle 10 balls at a time?"

The lack of workplace basics, in my observation, is rooted in outmoded ideas about power and authority, rooted in bureaucratic organizational structures that have been around since the 1800s. Once your organization (and note that I'm not saying IT organization, but the overall organization) tackles those basics, the rest is relatively easy. No management snake oil needed.

I would take a 10% paycut if my company listened to me when setting deadlines for projects. Instead of basing due dates upon lollypops and unicorns, I'd rather them actually ask us what is possible considering the priority and resource availability. The current method is to set unrealistic deadlines, force lots of overtime, then when missing the deadline is unavoidable, simply move the deadline. But this time we really mean it. We have to make this deadline. Then a few weeks before implementation just cancel the whole thing.

Yep, I'd give up 10% for a more sane approach.

The other statement that rang true is management having 20 #1 priorities. The obvious result is that crisis becomes the only priority setting mechanism. This is beyond retarted.

I'd be more engaged if management would listen to my expert opinion and fix my administrative problems as well as set the focus on things that would advance my work. For example, many times I pointed out why a technical decision will have negative consequences. I was shot down and now everyone has to deal with the disadvantages that cost the company money. Money that could be spent on a friggin 70 buck 2TB hard drive that I was denied (including the request to replace my 4 year old hunk o junk Dell), but having every management meeting off site with full catering that is no problem. And lastly, fix the problems that keep me from doing work, especially when the focus is set on things that in the end matter little to customers.Recently one layer of management was removed entirely and there was absolutely no change. We didn't need all these manager's managers for quite a while. All they did was sit in meetings and sign off on time sheets and reject purchase orders.